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The negative consequences of the growing demand for palm oil are regularly in the news and an increasing number of people avoid palm oil. In an earlier blog I explained why boycotting palm oil actually isn’t such a good idea if you care about humans, animals and the environment. In this blog I’d like to address another problem related to the campaign against palm oil. Personally I feel increasingly uncomfortable about these campaigns. Not only because they often inspire people to boycotts that may be even more harmful, but also because this seems to stem from a neocolonial attitude. The framing of palm oil as a big problem and encouraging people to take action against it (with boycotts or petitions) is mostly done in the West. But what gives us the right to decide what crops other countries can and can’t grow? Why are we entitled to decide whether or not other countries can cut down parts of their forests? Implicitly, these campaigns and the opinions of many palm oil boycotters shows that many people in the West still believe they can decide what happens in other countries. This attitude may not be so surprising considering the general lack of intersectionality within the animal rights and environmental movements in the West, but is therefore not less problematic.

Of course the current palm oil situation is also partly the result of neocolonialism. Despite decolonization, most Western countries continue an unequal relationship with previous colonies that is hard for these countries to escape. Many countries that used to be colonies are still used as areas of production that are expected to produce whatever the West wants. Many animal related and environmental problems in these countries are thereby also indirectly caused by the West and neocolonialism sustains a certain state of relative poverty and dependence. Despite the fact that people in third world countries also have autonomy and agency, this dependency has caused a situation in which many people have little choice but to produce whatever Western companies ask of them. As the current palm oil industry is also the result of neocolonialism, there is a good argument to want to end this industry. However, the anti palm oil campaigns don’t attempt to solve this dependency and end neocolonialism, but are instead a continuation of this and have the potential to increase the existing gap.

On many websites about palm oil, human rights violations are mentioned as one of the reasons why palm oil is bad. It is certainly true that human rights are sometimes violated by the palm oil industry, for example when people are forced to give up their land for palm oil plantations. However, the palm oil industry isn’t only bad for people. This industry has also created many jobs and contributed to increasing prosperity. It is therefore not surprising that many people in Indonesia and Malaysia are positive about the palm oil industry. They are aware that deforestation is bad and that the palm oil production causes problems, but for many people be total impact is still overwhelmingly positive. In addition to jobs and prosperity, the palm oil industry also offers a possibility for those countries to start using more renewable energy in the future and to become less dependent on other countries for (often fossil) fuels.

Lately I noticed that many Indonesians and Malaysians criticize the Western anti palm oil campaigns and that they’re angry. Why do we interfere and think we can decide what jobs they should do? Why do we think they’re only there to produce whatever we want? How dare people who have deforested most of their own country and don’t do anything to reforest them complain about deforestation in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia whose surface for 60-70 percent still consists of forests? Why don’t Western countries concern themselves with solving deforestation and other environmental problems in their own countries instead of trying to decide what happens in other countries?

Of course deforestation and environmental degradation has international consequences. Are we then not allowed to have a say in things that influence us as well? However, in my opinion the critique on anti palm oil campaigns is still justified. After all, most Western countries also wouldn’t accept another country deciding what they grow or do, especially when that decision would also cost a lot of money and jobs. In addition, Western countries also don’t attempt to put that kind of pressure on other Western countries who deforest or badly pollute the environment. Why then do we expect to be able to tell previous colonies what they should do? Shouldn’t we want their governments to listen to their own populations instead of doing what people on the other side of the world want? A lot of the critique on palm oil is unfortunately based on a very arrogant neocolonial attitude. Therefore, let’s just leave it to the citizens of Indonesia and Malaysia to decide whether they want to keep their forests or cut them down, and whether they want to choose economic prosperity over environmental degradation. After all, in the West we have the same freedom and no other states can stop us from polluting the environment when we choose to do so for economic gain. Let’s treat all countries the same and not treat some as inferior, and most of all, let’s focus on our own environmental and animal related issues first as every Western country has plenty.

And while palm oil is a clear example of this, colonial attitudes influence a lot more than just this one problem. In the West more and more people believe deforestation in third world countries should be stopped. If this would happen that could lead to significantly more poverty in countries that are often already relatively poor. Do we have the right to decide between human suffering and the environment in other countries? Directly or indirectly infringing on another countries sovereignty in order to stop deforestation would be a possible new extreme in the neocolonial dynamics. Considering our long history with imperialism and colonialism it’s crazy that neocolonialist thinking is still so prevalent. Let’s stop treating countries differently and treat previous colonies just the same as polluting Western countries when it comes to environmental problems.

Every year about 330 million rabbits are killed in the EU for meat. It’s unknown how many rabbits are reared in the UK for this purpose, but the last statistics from 2009 show that between 2000 and 3000 tonnes of rabbit meat were produced that year. While the rabbit industry in the UK is not that big compared to other European countries, the UK also imports rabbit meat from other countries.

Breeding rabbits

Some of the rabbits are kept specifically for breeding. The females are artificially inseminated for the first time when they’re about 15 weeks old. After a month, their babies are born, usually about nine of them. Unfortunately there are no suitable nesting materials in the cages, as the rabbits are born in bare wire cages. After 10 to 12 days, the mother is artificially inseminated again. These rabbits live longer than their children, but as they’re locked up in wire cages all the time, they often get health problems. Wounds on their feet and mammary gland infections are common. Quite soon their health deteriorates and they also begin to give birth to less babies at a time. Therefore, these breeding rabbits are usually send to the slaughterhouse after about a year.

Life in a cage

Sadly, there are no European regulations for housing of rabbits. This means that their situation is often even worse than that of other animals kept for meat. Especially meat from France, Southern Europe or outside the EU is often from animals reared in horrific conditions. In some countries like the Netherlands, slightly better cages are used. These cages are still made from wire and are completely bare. The animals can sit up straight in these cages, but they barely have any room to move. Baby rabbits stay with their mom for the first 4 to 5 weeks and are then placed in other wire cages, where they have about one A4 paper of space. The wire from the cages often causes wounds on their feet and because they live so close together, the chance of illnesses is big. And of course, the conditions in other countries with less ‘luxurious’ facilities are unfortunately even worse.

Health problems and death toll

Rabbits are usually slaughtered when they’re about 10 to 12 weeks old. About 20 percent of the rabbits dies before reaching the slaughter age. It differs at individual companies companies how many die exactly, but in most companies in Europe, it’s between 12 and 30 percent. The deaths are often caused by a combination of illness and stress, both caused by the unnatural and unsuitable conditions in which they’re kept.

Many rabbits have wounds because of the wire cages and have respiratory problems. Rabbits also have a relatively weak stomach and intestines, so digestive problems are also common. When these occur, rabbits often die within 24 hours. As there are usually thousands or tens of thousands of rabbits at one farm, it’s impossible to notice sick rabbits in time and it’s not unusual to find dead rabbits that have been laying between living ones for quite a while.

In addition, they also have to endure a lot of stress because they live so close to each other and have nothing to do all day. Therefore, it’s not surprising they often show signs of disturbing behavior such as shaking their heads, continuously turning around, biting the wire and harming themselves or others. They’re often very scared as well. That’s why rabbit farmers often keep a radio on 24/7, but even with these sounds they’re often very stressed and scared. Another problem in this sector is that rabbits are often lifted by their ears when they’re moved. Their ears are very sensitive so this is definitely not an animal friendly or harmless way to pick them up.

At the slaughterhouse

When they’re being moved to the slaughterhouse, rabbits are put in the same crates that are also used for chickens. In many cases they’re moved to a slaughterhouse abroad, as countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands don’t have any slaughterhouses for rabbits. Unfortunately, there are not many rules for the transport of live rabbits abroad, so they’re often stuck in the crates for long periods of time without any water or food. At the slaughterhouse, they’re first stunned with an electric shock, before they get their throat cut so they bleed to death.

Rabbit hunt

Rabbits are also hunted for their meat or just for fun. It is not known how many rabbits are killed by hunters every year in the UK, but it’s probably hundreds of thousands. Hunters can use guns to kill rabbits, but some hunters also put nets in front of the rabbit holes and let a ferret chase the rabbits out of there. Hunting rabbits is allowed year round and the same goes for many other European countries.

In the UK, 165 million cups of tea are consumed every day, an astonishing 60.2 billion per year. Tea is mostly produced in India, but also in several other Asian countries and even some African and South American countries. Unfortunately, tea production often causes a lot of human suffering. In this blog we review the existing information about working conditions on tea plantations and human rights violations in the tea industry.

Slavery and forced labour

Worldwide, an estimated 46 million people are forced to work as slaves. Unfortunately, together with coffee, sugar and cocoa, tea plantations are one of the products with the highest chance of slavery being involved.

There are several reasons for that. The first is that many tea pickers in India, Brazil and in most African countries earn so little that they easily become indebted. This leads to a cycle of indebtedness that forces workers to continue working on the plantation and often leads to oppressive conditions where workers aren’t allowed to leave and kept there by force. Every year, hundreds of workers die of starvation as they simply can’t afford more food and are unable to flee the plantation.

Another problem related to slavery is kidnapping and human trafficking, mostly of children and teenagers. This appears to be a big problem in India. Especially children of tea pickers seem to be vulnerable to kidnapping and human trafficking. As tea pickers earn so extremely little, it’s relatively easy to take children with the promise of more food and money. Many young teenagers willingly go with what later turn out to be human traffickers when they’re promised a good job. Most of these children are then sold as domestic help to families in cities. In Delhi alone, it’s believed that more than 100,000 young people are kept as domestic slaves. The testimony of the small number of children that are saved every year tell a story of beatings and abuse. While in these cases slave labour may not be used at tea plantations itself, the ridiculously low wages do significantly contribute to this problem, as most kidnapped children come from tea plantation families.

Another form of forced labour is the usage of prison labour to produce tea. For example, in China, prisoners from some penal camps are forced to pick tea leaves.

Child labour

Child labour is also very common on tea plantations. School dropout rates among children of tea pickers in India is extraordinarily high, as their parents earn too little to sustain the family. Even at schools that provided free mid-day meals, dropout among children from tea families was high. Furthermore, the high quotas from the tea industry mean that there’s so much work for tea pickers that they are often forced to bring their children to assist them in order to meet their quotas.

In Africa, child labour is also common. Research in Western Uganda showed that around 40,000 children worked as tea pickers there, mostly because of poverty. Malawi is another country where many children work on tea plantations. This is mainly because of the low payment their parents get from tea picking. According to the United States Department of Labor, child labour is common on tea plantations in Burma, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam. In addition, a study showed that child workers in Sri Lanka are often subject to physical, sexual and mental abuse.

Exploitation

Even when there is no child labour or slavery involved, the tea industry often isn’t exactly without injustice and suffering. A World Bank investigation in India found that tea plantations had abysmal sanitation, lacked pesticide safety equipment and that there was inadequate housing.

Low wages are also a considerable problem. For example, in India tea workers have the lowest wage and worst living conditions out of all industries. This does not only contribute to child labour and slavery, but it also lowers the quality of life in many other ways. Tea pickers are often overworked and struggle to meet the high quotas. In addition, low wages can also cause malnutrition as workers can’t afford sufficient or a wide enough variety of food to sustain themselves. For example, a study in Bangladesh showed that many workers at a tea plantation had nutrient deficiencies and parasitic infections related to malnutrition.

Another problem in tea plantations in most countries, from Africa to India and China, is gender discrimination. For example, in Asia, about 95 percent of tea pickers are women. While some have argued that this can be a way to empower women as wage earners, gender discrimination means that women have to work extra hard. They regularly earn about half of what men earn. As women have little opportunity to get other jobs on plantations and often don’t have much chance of getting other jobs outside of the plantation, they’re stuck doing leaf picking for a meagre wage. In this way, the tea industry prevents gender equality in order to gain more profit.

In India and Sri Lanka, tea plantations also contribute to discrimination on ethnic grounds. Tea pickers are often people from a specific ethnic minority. For example, in Sri Lanka, it’s mostly people of Tamil origin and Sinhalese whose families have often been working on these tea plantations since colonial times. As most of these people work on tea plantations, they live physically segregated from the rest of society. This also makes it much more difficult from them to leave the plantation and look for work elsewhere, as they have no social network outside of the plantations and often face discrimination.

Alternatives?

So is there any tea that is produced ethically? Unfortunately, it’s hard to say what tea is produced without child labour, slavery or exploitation. Producers like to advertise themselves as an ethical brand, but that doesn’t mean their product is necessarily better. As mentioned in the blogs on cocoa and coffee, Fairtrade certification doesn’t mean that the workers received a fair price. Fairtrade products consist of a mix of Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade products. In addition, even certified Fairtrade producers don’t always benefit from this arrangement. For example, a study by economists showed that farmers producing Fairtrade products in Uganda and Ethiopia received lower payment and worked under worse conditions than most non-Fairtrade farmers in the same countries and sectors. Sadly, most of the higher price for Fairtrade goods remains in the country where it’s consumed, with often only a few cents going to the country where it’s produced and regularly not ending up with the primary producer, the farmer or in this case, tea pickers. A study of Fairtrade tea in India concluded that in order to improve the working conditions of the workers, Fairtrade International needs to focus more on the workers and begin a dialogue with them, instead of focusing on plantation managers and potential consumers.

Another similar initiative is the Ethical Tea Partnership. Unfortunately, they mostly focus on development and sustainability, but don’t actually tackle slavery and child labour problems. Sadly, while many producers and plantations promise to give their workers benefits such as education, medical help and a living wage, this unfortunately often isn’t the case. As in the case of coffee and cocoa, big tea brands are unable to check all their plantations and therefore can’t guarantee that their tea is produced 100% ethically. Smaller companies might be able to buy tea from farmers or plantations directly, but as in the case of coffee, this doesn’t mean its production is necessarily any more ethically.

Therefore, the most ethical option is to just not consume any tea made of tea leaves. If you like drinking tea, there are some more ethical options, which are mostly herbal teas. The most ethical option is to grow your own tea, by having a mint plant, lemon balm plant or another plant that can be used for making fresh tea. In addition, commercial herbal teas that are produced in Europe are also mostly an ethical choice. However, the country of origin is often not mentioned on a box of tea, so you’d have to ask the producer about the origin first.

Many people like going to the zoo and it often doesn’t even occur to them that there may be something wrong with it. Although zoos first began as menageries of kings and weren’t particularly animal-friendly, things have improved a lot since then. Today, zoos have to meet certain requirements. They are no longer merely there for displaying animals. Nowadays zoos also have the goal of conserving animal species through breeding programs and research.

Useful?

The question is whether zoos are useful or not. It’s very difficult and expensive to put animals back into the wild, so this rarely happens. In addition, the habitats of many animals disappear, which sometimes makes putting them back into the wild impossible. Breeding programs are therefore aimed at providing the zoo with animals to attract the public and to keep the species alive. However, there are biologists who think these breeding programs are a negative thing. They feel that the money used for these programs could be better spent on trying to conserve nature and thus animals in the wild, instead of continuing to destroy natural habitats while pretending this isn’t problematic just because some specimens of certain animals will survive in zoos.

While it is officially their goal, the conservation and protection of animals seems to be of little importance to zoos. Less than 25% of zoo animals are actually threatened with extinction. The remaining animals that aren’t facing extinction are only kept in zoos for the public’s entertainment. In addition, 85% of endangered animals are not represented in zoos worldwide. For endangered amphibians, this percentage is even higher at 97%, while most insects aren’t even kept at all. If the conservation of endangered species was a priority for zoos, then surely these species would also be kept. The number of endangered species in zoos has increased in recent years, not because zoos adopt more endangered animals, but because the animals they already have slowly go extinct in the wild. The point being that zoos are ”protecting” more and more endangered species, but not because they actively try, but rather accidentally do so.

Even for species that are endangered, a zoo is not the ideal solution. There are often only a few animals of each kept, which makes it difficult to maintain the species and keep them healthy in the long run. Different researchers therefore conclude that zoos do not contribute significantly to the conservation of animal species.

In addition, zoos contribute to research into animal species, both in the zoos themselves and in the wild. However, only a few percent of the profits are used for this. This is often a few hundred thousand euros per sizable zoo per year. The vast majority of the money goes to the conservation of the zoos themselves. One other function of a zoo is to educate, although most visitors only go for the entertainment and few read the signs. Knowledge tests among visitors often show that people learn very little from their visit.

Animal-friendly?

It’s difficult to say what it’s like for an animal to live in a zoo. It’s clear that some species do better than others. It’s thought that space is an important factor for animal happiness and well-being. Animals in zoos are often used to habitats that span hundreds or even thousands of square kilometres. Research has shown that species who are used to lots of space in the wild show signs of disturbing behaviour when confined to small enclosures. Even if it’s no longer necessary to travel many miles to find food, these animals still feel the need to act out these instincts and when they can’t, they become frustrated. In addition, social contact is crucial for many animals and is likely to play an important role in the happiness of individual animals. Social contact is often negatively influenced by living in small spaces and with only a few other animals.

Some animal species clearly show signs that life in captivity doesn’t suit them. For example, they get reproductive problems and display strange behaviours, such as pacing up and down and other repetitive movements, or they begin to excessively wash, bite or scratch themselves. According to different biologists, an animal displaying this kind of behaviour is unhappy and stressed. It follows that life in captivity is not necessarily conducive to animal health. A study of elephants in the United Kingdom showed that 75% of elephants were overweight and less than one in five could walk normally. This is simply because elephants in captivity walk and move far too infrequently. Wild elephants live, on average, three times as long as their species in captivity, and other species also often have a shorter lifespan in zoos. Therefore zoos are not a particularly good place for animals to be.

And that’s the case when everything goes well! In the United Kingdom, the Captive Animals’ Protection Society has already released several undercover videos, showing footage of things that shouldn’t be happening at all. Animals were neglected, did not get treated for diseases or wounds or in extreme cases were just laying dead in a room, rotting away.

Surplus animals

Reproduction is very important in zoos, not just to keep species from going extinct, but also because many zoos think it’s important to allow animals to give in to their natural urges. Anticonception is sometimes used but often comes with considerable risks. After usage over an extended period of time, many species are no longer able to reproduce, even after they’re made to stop using anticonception. Because reproduction is mostly allowed and sometimes even encouraged, zoos produce many new animals every year. As most zoos don’t have space to accommodate this endlessly rising number of animals, animals are regularly killed to ensure there is enough space left for the remaining members of that species. Sometimes it’s older animals that are killed, other times young newborns. The European zoo association estimates that in Europe a few thousand zoo animals are killed for this reason every year. In 2014 many people complained as it became known that giraffe Marius in Denmark was killed and then fed to other zoo animals. This case happened to make it into the news, but most surplus animals just disappear unnoticed. When you think about it, it’s very strange that we kill many rare and even highly intelligent animals such as primates, just because we don’t have enough space for them in our zoos.

While many animals are killed because there’s no space for them, there are also still animals being taken from the wild to live out the rest of their lives in captivity. While many zoos are self-sufficient nowadays or exchange animals among themselves, this still happens. Sea animals are especially sought after and are often caught for zoos.

It’s clear that zoos aren’t exactly animal-friendly and also not very useful. There are many better ways to help wild animals and prevent species from going extinct. So next time don’t visit the zoo and use your money in a way that does help animals.